


Once

by dith



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-08
Updated: 2012-09-08
Packaged: 2017-11-13 19:17:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/506812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dith/pseuds/dith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Whether Steve was the littlest guy or big, blows still hurt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Once

**Author's Note:**

> Can be read as gen or slash, as you please.

Once, Steve Rogers had been the scrawniest of kids, in a world where kids were often on their own and where there were no play dates.

Steve learned to stand fighting because he had to, and standing it was what he did. Because he had no muscle, no mass, and no leverage. So fighting consisted of getting hit. Which hurt, a lot.

Lots of things hurt - watching neighbors selling everything they had for some food; watching good boys turn into bad men because they didn't have any other option; watching for Bucky to come by because Steve didn't have anyone else to talk to. Fighting hurt as much as some things but not as much as others.

Once, Steve Rogers realized that even with strength, size and speed, fighting hurt. It didn't hurt as long, but it still hurt. And watching men he knew and liked - and sometimes loved - die around him hurt more.

He knew how to take it. That was his chief skill, and it hadn't changed. Everyone else thought he was a supersoldier because Dr. Erskine had made him one, and Dr. Erskine had thought he was a supersoldier because he was a good man. Steve knew, though, that he was a supersoldier - to whatever extent he would accept that label - because he didn't give up, and because he could soak up whatever he had to in order to complete the mission.

Once, he felt a guilt that he was afraid could block out the sun because he was selling war bonds and traveling the country with pretty girls, and he knew every day while he was doing it that no one was hitting him, and it mortified him that he was glad.

Once, he felt more grateful to Howard Stark than that man would ever know, because his shield at least was something he could put between himself and pain. He was a big man now but he folded up small when he had to - like when he had to put that shield between himself and a bomb blast. Dr. Erskine had given him the gift of surviving more pain than he previously would have survived; but that didn't mean Steve enjoyed it.

When he was big, as when he was little, no one came to protect him in a fight. He was on his own. Sometimes he watched the sun come up or go down, seeing his breath forming in a cloud in front of him, standing in the middle of a field of destroyed war machines or dead bodies, waiting for the next fight, alone because he was Captain America.

He held on to the things he believed about himself, and what it meant to fight an honorable fight, because he didn't want to forget that defending was more important than attacking, and that striking out at others always had to serve a strategic objective. He needed to never fear pain, never even avoid it when it was strategically necessary, or he might turn into something he didn't recognize.

He envied Tony his metal armor, and the Hulk his irradiated skin, and he protected Clint and Natasha as much as he could because he knew how much they could be hurt.

Once, during a fight with a particular space alien monster thing (classification still unclear) that was destroying a small town in Estonia, Steve was knocked up into the air, tossed about a quarter mile, and came down on a rock wall that had been there for two thousand years, crushing it. The pain was incredible and Steve wished that he could black out. He lay there, breathing for a few minutes, feeling his spine, ribs, skull, and lungs knit themselves back together.

And, as in the near distance Steve could see Tony and the Hulk dismantling what was left of the monster (was it alive? was it a machine?), Thor dropped out of the sky and landed next to Steve, and picked him up off the stones, with an expression of tenderness that only another soldier could possibly show.

Steve never knew if Thor knew what it was to feel this way, if he felt pain the way Steve did and could simply function despite it the way Steve did. Steve suspected he did not.

But Thor's deep-set eyes still showed his Asgardian compassion, boundless and obvious like all Thor's emotions, as he picked up his friend and cradled him in his arms. Steve's body, more slender and lighter than Thor's, sagged in Thor's arms as Steve didn't fight him. 

"Good Captain," rumbled Thor in his chest as Steve felt himself gathered against it, "you will not fall this day."

No, thought Steve calmly, I will not fall this or any day, I was not made to fall, I can't fall, I always have to get up.

But instead of standing Steve just closed his eyes, and for the first time in his life, Steve retreated into the shelter of the arms of someone bigger and stronger, someone who didn't want to see Steve get hurt any more, someone who could stand between Steve and the rest of the world and keep it from him, even just for a minute.

Once, Steve was protected.


End file.
